[Sidenote: 1760.]
Meanwhile on the 20th of November Parliament had met to hear his
first speech from a new king. For on the 25th of October, just
before the coming of the news of Kloster Kampen, King George the
Second had died suddenly, having lived to see the glories of Queen
Anne's reign brought back by Pitt, and the fame of Blenheim and
Oudenarde revived not only by Minden and Warburg but by Wandewash
and Quebec. George the Third struck a new and strange note in
his speech from the throne. "Born and educated in England," he
said--and the words were of his own insertion--"I glory in the
name of Briton"; and the phrase fell pleasantly on ears that did
not love the sound of Hanover; though what this sudden outburst
of insular patriotism on the King's part might portend to his
German allies was not yet revealed. The estimates for the Army were
passed with little difficulty, though the Establishment showed
a considerable increase. The new regiments that appeared on the
list, indeed, were few, for a system had been initiated of raising
an indefinite number of independent companies; but these were
gradually combined into regiments, and before the campaign opened
there was already a corps numbered the hundredth of the Line.[372]
The total number of men voted on the British Establishment was one
hundred and four thousand; besides which the embodied militia was
increased from eighteen to twenty-seven thousand, making, together
with the troops on the Irish Establishment, over one hundred
and forty thousand men raised in the British possessions alone.
Adding the mercenary forces of Hanover, Hesse, and Brunswick, the
number of soldiers in British pay fell little short of two hundred
thousand.
[Sidenote: 1761.]
Yet for the present no considerable reinforcement was despatched
to Ferdinand. A battalion from each regiment of Guards had indeed
been sent to him late in the past campaign, together with the
usual drafts to fill up vacancies. But Pitt had another enterprise
in hand as a diversion in Ferdinand's favour. A scheme of the
kind had indeed been on the point of execution in the autumn of
1760; and eight thousand men had actually been embarked for a
secret expedition under General Kingsley, but had been returned
to the shore on receipt of the news of Kloster Kampen.[373] In
January, however, the same regiments were again warned for service
under Major-General Hodgson,[374] and on the 29th of March they
sailed from Spithead under convoy of ten ships of the line,
besides smaller vessels, under Admiral Keppel, for their unknown
destination.[375]
[Sidenote: April.]
[Sidenote: April 22.]
On the 7th of April the fleet anchored off the island of Belleisle
on the French coast, and on the following day sailed round it
looking for an undefended point. Finally Port La Maria on the
south-eastern side was selected; the troops were shifted into
flat-bottomed boats, and an attempt was made to storm some French
entrenchments which covered the landing-place. But the ground was
so steep that only sixty men of the Thirty-seventh succeeded in
making their way to the top of the heights above the sea, and these
after a gallant attempt to hold their ground were overpowered
by superior numbers. The attempt was therefore abandoned, and
the troops were re-embarked, having lost about five hundred men,
killed, wounded, and taken. The island was in fact so strong by
nature, and so skilfully fortified by art, that Keppel despaired of
a successful descent.[376] The commanders, however, decided that,
if feint attacks were made on La Maria and Sauzon some footing
might be obtained by ascending the rocks between them, which being
judged inaccessible had been left undefended. The attempt was
accordingly made on the 22nd and was brilliantly successful. The
grenadier-company of the Nineteenth contrived to scramble up the
rocks and to hold its own on the summit until reinforced, when the
men charged with the bayonet, drove back the enemy and captured
three guns. The French then retired into the fortress of Palais
and proceeded to strengthen the defences; while Hodgson, to his
infinite mortification, was obliged to lie idle for a fortnight,
being unable to land his heavy artillery owing to continual gales.
At length on the 2nd of May ground was broken, and on the 13th
the entrenchments were carried by storm. The French thereupon
retired into the citadel, which after a most gallant defence was
compelled on the 7th of June to surrender. The losses of the
British throughout the whole of the operations were about seven
hundred killed and wounded. Thus Belleisle was secured as a place
of refreshment for the fleet while engaged in the weary work of
blockading the French coast.
[Sidenote: Feb.]
Any hopes that might have been built on the value of this
expedition as a help to Ferdinand were very speedily dissipated.
Ferdinand himself had sought, while it was yet mid-winter, to make
good the losses of the past campaign by a bold stroke for the
recapture of Hesse. Moving out of his winter-quarters on the 11th
of February he distributed his army into three columns. The left
or eastern column, under Spörcke, was designed to march to the
Werra and Unstrut, and to join with a detachment of Prussians in an
attack upon the Saxons in that quarter; the main or central army,
under Ferdinand himself, was to march to the Eder; and the right
or westward column, which was composed of the troops cantoned in
Westphalia under the Hereditary Prince, was to advance on Fritzlar,
while a separate corps was detached to attempt the capture of
Marburg.
[Sidenote: March 20.]
[Sidenote: March 21.]
[Sidenote: March.]
Spörcke for his part did his work well and gained a brilliant
little victory at Langensalza; but the rest of the scheme went
to wreck. Broglie on learning of Ferdinand's movements left a
garrison in Cassel and retreated first to Hersfeld, behind the
Eder, and finally to the Main. But meanwhile the Hereditary Prince
had been delayed for two invaluable days by unexpected resistance
at Fritzlar; and Ferdinand, though he had driven the enemy for
the moment from Hesse, had left Cassel, Ziegenhain, and Marburg,
invested indeed but untaken, behind him. He dared not linger to
master these places one after another, for the whole country was
laid waste, and the strain of hauling all supplies from the Weser
was intolerable. The road from Beverungen to the central column of
the army was paved with dead horses, the corpses tracing the whole
line of the advance. He was therefore obliged to hasten on to a
district where supplies were still obtainable, trusting that good
fortune would throw the strong places into his hands before it was
too late. But it was not to be. Broglie quickly concentrated his
troops on the Main, summoned twelve thousand men from the Lower
Rhine and advanced northward to Giessen; whereupon Ferdinand, who
had penetrated as far south as the Ohm, was compelled to fall
back to the Eder. On the following day the Hereditary Prince
was attacked by superior numbers at Grünberg and compelled to
retreat with loss of two thousand prisoners; and this misfortune
neutralised all the advantages so far gained by the enterprise.
Ferdinand, therefore, raised the siege of Cassel and fell back with
all speed by forced marches; for Broglie had now eighty thousand
troops against his own twenty thousand. Arrived at his old position
to north of the Diemel he dispersed his troops once more into
winter-quarters. His stroke had failed; and the operations are
interesting chiefly as exemplifying the futility, in those days of
slow communication, of an advance into an enemy's country, unless
at least one fortress were first captured as a place of arms. It
is easier to understand the reason for the laborious sieges of
Marlborough and Wellington when it is observed that Ferdinand,
though he drove the French before him from end to end of Hesse in
a few weeks, was obliged to abandon the whole of it and to retreat
because he had left Cassel uncaptured in his rear.
The Allies had suffered so terribly from hardship and exposure
during this winter's expedition that it was two months before they
were again fit to take the field;[377] and the French, partly
from the same cause, partly owing to the magnitude of their
preparations, needed little less time than they. The Court of
Versailles had, in fact, resolved to make a gigantic effort and to
close the war forthwith by employment of an overwhelming force. The
army of the Rhine was raised to one hundred thousand men, under the
Prince of Soubise, and that of the Main to sixty thousand men under
Broglie. Soubise was to advance from the Rhine against Ferdinand
early in May; thus forcing the Prince either to abandon Westphalia,
together with Münster and Lippstadt, in order to gain time for
recuperation of his army, or to march with his troops, still
weakened and exhausted by the winter's campaign, to fight him. His
task in fact was simply to keep Ferdinand's army in motion until
Broglie's troops were refreshed, and ready to advance either into
Hanover or to Hameln on the Weser. When Broglie thus occupied the
attention of Ferdinand, Soubise would find himself with a free hand
in a free field. The weak point of the plan was that the two French
armies were to act independently, and that the stronger of them was
entrusted to Soubise, an incompetent commander but a favourite with
Madame de Pompadour. But in any case the outlook for Ferdinand was
formidable, since at the very most he could muster but ninety-three
thousand men against one hundred and sixty thousand of the French.
[Sidenote: April.]
[Sidenote: May 14.]
Soubise duly arrived at Frankfort on the 13th of April and
summoned Broglie to discuss matters with him. Then, instead of
taking the field early in May, he remained motionless behind the
Rhine on various pretexts until the beginning of June. Further,
he determined, contrary to the advice given to him at Versailles,
to pursue operations to the south of the Lippe, and between that
river and the Ruhr, in order to effect a junction with Broglie. The
motives that may have dictated this resolution are unknown; but
it was conjectured that he shrank from engaging so formidable an
adversary as Ferdinand without a colleague to share the risk and
responsibility. Meanwhile Ferdinand, selecting the least exhausted
of his troops, sent a corps under the Hereditary Prince to Nottuln,
a little to the west of Münster, to watch Soubise, and by great
exertions contrived within ten weeks to render both his army and
his transport fit to take the field. Soubise's army was known
to be encumbered by a vast train of baggage; one troop of Horse
Guards, for instance, with a strength of one hundred and forty men,
travelling with no fewer than twelve hundred horses attached to
it. So all the forage about Münster was destroyed, the inhabitants
and their herds being provided for by the King's commissaries, and
every step was taken to embarrass the French in their advance to
the east.
[Sidenote: June.]
[Sidenote: July 1-2.]
[Sidenote: July 3.]
[Sidenote: July 4.]
[Sidenote: July 6.]
At length on the 13th of June Soubise crossed the Rhine at Wesel,
and arrived ten days later at Unna, a few miles to eastward of
Dortmund, where he entrenched himself, with his front to the east.
Ferdinand thereupon concentrated his army on the 19th at Paderborn,
leaving twenty thousand men under Spörcke on the Diemel to watch
Broglie, and a smaller corps of observation before Göttingen. On
the 20th he marched westward, and on the 28th encamped over against
Soubise, where he was joined by the corps of the Hereditary Prince.
Finding that the French position was too formidable to be attacked,
he determined on a bold stroke, made a forced march of thirty
hours round Soubise's left flank by Camen, and appeared suddenly
at Dortmund full in his rear and across his line of communication.
The movement left Soubise free to unite with Broglie; but this was
rather an advantage than otherwise to Ferdinand, since the two
commanders being on bad terms might neutralise each other, whereas
each of them independently was at the head of a stronger army than
Ferdinand's. On the 4th of July Ferdinand advanced against the rear
of Soubise's camp; whereupon the French General at once moved on,
always with the Allies close at his heels, to Soest, where Broglie
came to concert with him the junction of the two armies.
[Sidenote: July 10.]
[Sidenote: July.]
Broglie himself had on the 29th of June advanced to the Diemel and
obliged Spörcke to abandon Warburg and to retreat, not without
loss of part of his artillery. He had then turned westward upon
Paderborn, which he had occupied, and thence to Soest, where his
army joined that of Soubise on the 10th of July. The joint strength
of the two armies at Soest, after deducting the detachments made
from both of them, was just about one hundred thousand men.
Ferdinand's force, after the arrival of Spörcke, who had made his
way to him from the Diemel with all haste, amounted to no more
than sixty thousand men. Even with such odds against him, however,
Ferdinand stood firm, refusing to cross to the north bank of the
Lippe and abandon Lippstadt, as the French commanders had hoped.
He was determined that they should fight him for Lippstadt; and
they, knowing their adversary, were not too eager to hazard the
venture.
After sundry small changes and shiftings of position between the
7th and 11th of July Ferdinand made the following dispositions.
General von Spörcke with about eight thousand men was left on the
north bank of the Lippe at Hersfeld, to watch Prince Xavier of
Saxony, who lay with a corps in the vicinity of Paderborn. The
main army was encamped on the south bank of the Lippe, with its
left resting on the river; from whence the left wing extended
to the village of Kirchdünckern on the Ase, a brook impassable
except by bridges. Vellinghausen, Ferdinand's headquarters, lay
midway between the Ase and the Lippe at the foot of a declivity
called the Dünckerberg. From the Lippe to Vellinghausen the
ground was occupied by Wutgenau's corps, of seven battalions and
five squadrons, all of them German troops. From Vellinghausen to
Kirchdünckern the heights were held by Granby's corps, consisting
of two battalions of British grenadiers, the Fifth, Twelfth,
Twenty-fourth and Thirty-seventh Foot under Brigadier Sandford,
Keith's and Campbell's Highlanders, six foreign battalions, the
Greys, Seventh and Eleventh Dragoons in one brigade under General
Harvey, and eight foreign squadrons, together with a regiment of
Hanoverian artillery. From the Ase the position was prolonged to
the right along a similar line of heights by the villages of Sud
Dünckern and Wambeln to the rear of Werle at Budberg, the whole
of the front being covered by a marshy brook called the Salzbach.
From the Ase to Wambeln the ground was occupied by Anhalt's corps
of ten German battalions and the First, Sixth, and Tenth British
Dragoons; to the right of Anhalt stood Conway's corps, of three
battalions of British Guards with their grenadiers massed into a
fourth battalion, Townsend's brigade of the Eighth, Twentieth,
Twenty-fifth, and Fiftieth Foot, and the First, Third, and Seventh
Dragoon Guards; to the right of Conway stood Howard's corps,
consisting of Cavendish's brigade of the Eleventh, Twenty-fifth,
Twenty-third, and Fifty-first Foot, two German battalions, the
British light batteries and two brigades of Hessian artillery;
and finally the extreme right from Wambeln to Hilbeck was held
by the Hereditary Prince's corps of twenty-five battalions and
twenty-four squadrons of Germans. The Salzbach was an obstacle
well-nigh insuperable, the only passage by which the French could
cross it being by the village of Scheidingen, opposite to Conway's
corps, where an old redoubt, dating from the days of Turenne, still
remained to bar the way. The weak point of the position was its
right flank which, though more or less protected by marshy ground,
lay practically in the air, and could have been turned with little
difficulty.
[Sidenote: July 15.]
The plan of the French commanders, though it took no advantage of
this defect, was not ill conceived. Broglie was to attack the corps
of Wutgenau and Granby, but particularly that of Granby between the
Lippe and the Ase, with his whole force; while Soubise kept the
rest of the Allies distracted by an attack on Scheidingen, at the
same time sending a cloud of light troops round the right flank
of the Allies to Hamm, five miles in their rear, so as to create
confusion and embarrass their retreat. The attack was fixed for
the 13th but was deferred for two days; and it was not until the
evening of the 15th that Ferdinand was apprised of the advance of
the French in force against his left. For some reason Wutgenau's
corps had been encamped a thousand yards in rear of its position in
the line of battle; and although it had received orders at noon,
in consequence of suspicious movements by the French, to strike
tents and march forward, yet this order had been cancelled. Thus
Broglie's attack came upon it as a complete surprise. Granby's
corps had only just time to seize its arms and turn out, leaving
the tents standing; the Highlanders indeed hardly emerging from
their tents before the French guns opened fire on them. Yet there
was no confusion, and Granby's dispositions were so good that
he was able to hold his own till Wutgenau's troops came up. The
two corps then made a fine defence until darkness put an end to
the combat; but none the less the French had succeeded in taking
Nordel, a village on Granby's right front, and had made good their
footing in Vellinghausen.
Meanwhile Soubise had not yet moved forward against Scheidingen.
The time fixed by the Marshals for their decisive attack has been,
in fact, the early hours of the 16th, so that Broglie's advance had
been premature. He excused himself by saying that he had intended
only to drive in the outposts of the Allies, but that he had been
encouraged by his unexpected success to bring forward more troops
to hold the ground that he had gained, and that he had accordingly
appealed to Soubise to hasten his movements likewise. Had Broglie
really pushed his attack home he would probably have succeeded,
for the Allies were too weak to stop him and were, moreover,
short of ammunition. But the Marshal was too timid a man to take
responsibility on his own shoulders; so instead of making a bold
attempt to carry the Dünckerberg, which if successful must have
forced Ferdinand to retreat, he stopped short at Vellinghausen,
leaving the Allies in their position unmoved.
[Sidenote: July 16.]
The night passed uneasily in the Allied camp. Between the Lippe
and the Ase skirmishing never ceased. The road to Hamm was full
of waggons going and returning with loads of ammunition; Anhalt's
corps, together with all the British of Howard's corps, was
streaming across the Ase to reinforce Granby; and Conway's and the
Hereditary Prince's were extending themselves leftward to cover the
ground thus left vacant. For Ferdinand knew Broglie to be his most
dangerous antagonist, and was determined to stop him at all costs
by fresh troops. Broglie, on his side, was equally busy replacing
the battalions that had already been engaged; and the dawn was no
sooner come than his columns deployed and attacked in earnest.
The ground was so much broken up by hedges and ditches that in
many places the troops engaged, though no more than one hundred
and fifty yards apart, were unable to see each other, and fired
furiously, not without destructive effect, at every puff of smoke
that betrayed an enemy's presence. From four until eight o'clock
this fusillade continued, neither side gaining or losing an inch of
ground, until at last it slackened from the sheer exhaustion of the
men, after more than twelve hours of intermittent action.
Meanwhile Broglie looked anxiously for Soubise's demonstration
against the Allied centre and right, but he looked in vain.
Soubise, though he did indeed bring forward troops against
Scheidingen, made but a faint attack, often renewed with
unchangeable feebleness and as often repulsed. Then after half an
hour's respite, the fire opened again on the Allied left. Spörcke
had detached six battalions to Wutgenau from Hersfeld; and the
arrival of fresh troops infused new life into the engagement.
Broglie too showed symptoms of reviving energy, for two French
batteries were observed in motion towards a height opposite the
Dünckerberg, from which they might have made havoc of Granby's
corps. Ferdinand ordered that the height should be carried at all
costs; and Maxwell's grenadiers, Keith's and Campbell's Highlanders
and four foreign battalions advanced forthwith to storm it. The
French were so much exhausted that they appear hardly to have
awaited the attack. They broke and fled precipitately, abandoning
their dead, their wounded, and several guns. Maxwell's grenadiers
alone made four battalions prisoners; and Broglie, disheartened by
his failure and by the apathy of Soubise, gave the word to retreat.
The ground was too much broken for the action of cavalry; so he
was able to draw off his troops with little loss indeed, but not
without shame and disgrace.
[Sidenote: July.]
Thus ended the battle of Vellinghausen, one of the feeblest ever
fought by the French army. The losses were not great on either side
for the numbers engaged. Those of the French were reckoned at
from five to six thousand men, besides eight colours and nineteen
guns; those of the Allies did not reach the figure of sixteen
hundred men, of whom over nine-tenths belonged to the corps to
the north of the Ase. The brunt of the fighting fell of course on
Granby's troops; but the casualties of the British with him little
exceeded four hundred men, while those of the British in other
parts of the field did not amount to fifty. The victory was in fact
trifling except for its moral effects; but these were sufficient.
The French were humbled at the failure of a hundred thousand men
against fifty thousand; and Broglie and Soubise, who had left the
camp with embraces, returned to it sworn enemies, each bitterly
reproaching the other for the loss of the battle. Lastly, Broglie,
who possessed some military talent and had hitherto been anxious to
bring his enemy to action, came to the conclusion that a general
engagement with Ferdinand was a thing henceforth not to be courted
but to be shunned.
[Sidenote: July 27.]
[Sidenote: August.]
[Sidenote: Aug. 16.]
[Sidenote: Aug. 22.]
[Sidenote: Aug. 28.]
The remainder of the campaign is reckoned to be the finest example
of Ferdinand's skill as a general; but it is impossible in this
place to sketch it in more than the faintest outline. After the
action, Soubise made up Broglie's army to forty thousand men,
and therewith the two commanders separated; Broglie marching on
Paderborn for operations against Hanover and Hesse, while Soubise
made for Wesel to threaten Westphalia. The Hereditary Prince was
detached to follow Soubise and to harass his rear-guard, while
Ferdinand marched some thirty miles eastward to Büren, to be
ready to move into Hesse and threaten Broglie's communications
with Frankfort. At the same time Granby's corps was sent forward
to Stadtberg, to drive back a French corps under Stainville,
which covered Hesse at the line of the Diemel. At Büren Ferdinand
remained, with his eye always on Lippstadt, until the 10th of
August; when, Stainville having been forced back to Cassel and
Soubise to the Rhine, both at a safe distance from the precious
fortress on the Lippe, he marched away to keep watch over Broglie's
army. That officer had used his time to advance to Höxter, aiming
at the capture of Hameln and the mastery of the line of the
Weser, and had detached a corps under Prince Xavier of Saxony
into the Principality of Göttingen. Ferdinand by swift marches
brought his army to northward of Broglie's at Reilenkirchen, thus
heading him back from Hameln; while a separate corps, which he
had sent across the Weser, attacked the French detachments about
Göttingen. The Hereditary Prince, finding nothing to fear from
Soubise, also returned from the Rhine to threaten Broglie from the
south. The Marshal thereupon crossed the Weser; and Ferdinand,
for all his unwillingness to move to the east bank of the river,
perforce followed him; carefully avoiding an engagement, however,
lest Soubise should seize the opportunity to march on Lippstadt.
Soubise, finding himself unwatched, moved eastward again towards
Hanover; whereupon the Hereditary Prince flew back to look after
him, and Ferdinand retiring with the rest of the army to the
Diemel, advanced against Broglie's communications with Marburg and
Frankfort. This movement brought Broglie back hurriedly to Cassel;
whereupon Ferdinand retired quietly to Geismar on the Diemel,
having accomplished his object of occupying Broglie's attention
for weeks and of rendering his movements absolutely purposeless,
without the risk of an action.
[Sidenote: Sept. 20.]
It was a whole fortnight before Broglie ventured to return to the
east side of the Weser, having meanwhile reinforced Stainville's
army for the protection of Hesse, and furnished him with most
careful instructions for his guidance. No sooner was the Marshal's
back turned, than Ferdinand made a sudden dash upon Stainville
just to south of the Diemel, and though he failed to inflict any
great damage on him, forced him to retire to Cassel and brought
Broglie back in all haste from Hanover. Meanwhile the lethargic
Soubise had made a diversion towards the sea, had actually taken
Emden, and was threatening Bremen. The Hereditary Prince was as
usual despatched to hunt him back to the Rhine; and Ferdinand's
communications with Holland were restored.
[Sidenote: October 10.]
There still remained some weeks, however, before the campaign
could be closed; and Broglie, despite all Ferdinand's activity,
was strong enough to detach a corps under Prince Xavier into
Brunswick, which captured Wolfenbüttel and bade fair to capture
Brunswick itself. The loss of these two fortresses would have
been serious, since the French could have turned them into bases
of operations for the next campaign, when Ferdinand would have
found it impossible to attend both to Brunswick and to Lippstadt.
He therefore hastened northward at once from the Diemel to save
his brother's capital; whereupon Prince Xavier, though Ferdinand
had travelled no further than Hameln on his way, at once withdrew
from before Brunswick and evacuated Wolfenbüttel. Much relieved
at the news of this deliverance, Ferdinand halted at Hameln until
November, when Soubise went into winter-quarters. He then made a
final effort to drive Broglie from the eastern bank of the Weser,
but succeeded only in thrusting him back for a short distance
from his northernmost post at Einbeck. Broglie then went into
winter-quarters along the Leine from Göttingen to Nordheim, and
the Allies followed his example; their chain of posts running
from Münster along the line of the Lippe and Diemel, and eastward
through the Sollinger Forest to Ferdinand's headquarters at
Hildesheim.
So ended this most arduous campaign, in which, though overmatched
by two to one, Ferdinand had won a victory on the battlefield and
lost little or no territory. The exertion demanded from his troops
by incessant and severe marches told heavily upon their efficiency,
and the more so since many of the men had been already much
weakened by the winter's campaign in Hesse. The waste of the army
was in fact appalling, amounting to no fewer than five-and-twenty
thousand out of ninety-five thousand men. Of these some few had
been killed in action, considerably more had deserted, still more
had been invalided, and fully one-half had died of hardship and
disease. It was only at such a price that Ferdinand could make
one army do the work of two; and the task would have been beyond
even his ability had not one of the commanders matched against
him been utterly incompetent, and the other hampered by constant
interference from Versailles. The extreme laxity of discipline
among the French also helped him not a little, and served to
heighten the moral superiority of his own troops. But, making all
such allowance in his favour, the campaign remains memorable in the
annals of war for the consummate skill with which Ferdinand kept
two armies, jointly of double his strength, continually in motion
for six months, without permitting them to reap the slightest
advantage from their operations.